In this ancient and traditional challenge two teams compete to move the Moonball to their opponent's goal to score points.

This Challenge has been tested for one-offs. It has not been tested for league play.

Ninja Allowed: 6

Setup: During step four of setup, before shrines and lanterns have been placed, the starting player places the Moonball in either the (10,10) or (10,11) space on the board (The coordinate system is relative to the that player's deployment side of the board, (1,1-20) is his side of the board (20, 1-20) is his opponent's side of the board). Use a Moon Powered token or something similar to represent the Moonball. Each player places two of his medal tokens at the spaces (2,7) and (2,14); These spaces are relative to each player's deployment side. Medal tokens can not be interacted with in any way and serve simply to mark the goal boxes.

Special Rules: The Moonball is a model with a regular sized base for all intents and purposes. It can be attacked but is immune to all abilities, status effects, card effects, and is immune to ranged attacks. Furthermore The Moonball is always considered to be Moon Powered, has a Def stat of 0, and has Vigilance. It is normally considered to be an enemy model to all other models on the board. The Moonball has an influence zone and all spaces adjacent to the Moonball are considered to be in its front influence zone (The Moonball has no back influence zone). However models do not need to roll dodge when moving through it.

During a model's activation, during its first move, if the model is ever adjacent to the Moonball, the player controlling this model may pick up the Moonball if the Moonball is not in the influence zone of any enemy model. If the player chose to do this, the currently active model loses stealth and the player may continue his model's move like normal. However, the player must place the Moonball token back down on the board when he has finished his model's first move. He may not use an action, an additional move, or end his turn before placing the Moonball back down on the board. When the Moonball is placed back on the board, it must be placed in the front influence zone of the currently active model. If no legal space is available, the currently active model's activation is ended, its model is moved to the healing house and The Moonball is placed in any square that model occupied.

When the Moonball is attacked, the attacking player's opponent acts as the Moonball's controller and is considered to be the defender (rolls dice, resolves water outcome). For the purposes of calculating defensive assists, during an attack against the Moonball, the models controlled by the defender are considered friendly to the Moonball and grant assist bonuses. When an air result is chosen in an attack against the Moonball, the attacker may move the Moonball up to 5 spaces instead of 3.

If after any model activation has been completely resolved, the Moonball occupies any space in the coordinates (1 - 2 , 7 - 14) relative to any player, that player immediately places the Moonball in the space (11,10) or (11,11). Or if occupied, in the closest unoccupied space on the 11th row (relative to that player's deployment zone). If the player who just finished an activation and the player who moved the Moonstone back to the center of the board are the same player, that player loses 1 point. Otherwise the player who just finished activating his model gains 1 point.

Challenge Length: 7 rounds

Additional XP Awarded:When a model makes an attack that results in the Moonball changing its position, that model receives 1XP.When a player gains 1 point, the model he most recently activated gains 1XP.

Last edited by RogueRifler on February 21st, 2016, 8:51 pm, edited 20 times in total.

I like the idea of this one. I may mull over a couple of the things in it. Like weather or not the ball gets defensive assists from opponents (I didn't see that talked about) and maybe another way or two to get scenario XP. But I always like scenarios that make combat useful, but not primary and that utilize the movement sides of combat dice.

With that little bit of bulking up and added definition I'd be happy to put it into my house rules thread. It should also go to the league challenges sub forum on it's own, as well, so people looking ro stuff like this can find it.

All right! Play tested this last night, and it sucked. Basically it boiled down to the fact that the Moonball was not mobile enough. Imagine soccer with a bag of rocks and that was about it.

So VERSION 2! Fight!

--added rules for a model to move the Moonball as part of its activation. This is limited to only using movement before actions to prevent sprinting the Moonball from one side of the board to the other, especially with haste. Seeing how haste is worded, it is possible to move twice with haste (the token says move or gain a second action as opposed to just gain an action which could be used to move). I don't know how broken that is.--changed the wording to allow 3-4 players--added XP for a model that scores on an other player's goal.--added rules to use medal tokens to outline a player's goal on the board.--reduced ninja count to 6 to keep the field from fur balling as much.--reduced goal size to make it easier to defend now that the ball is more mobile.

I have only tried this with shrine teams and so far its been interesting.

All right! Play tested this last night, and it sucked. Basically it boiled down to the fact that the Moonball was not mobile enough. Imagine soccer with a bag of rocks and that was about it.

So VERSION 2! Fight!

--added rules for a model to move the Moonball as part of its activation. This is limited to only using movement before actions to prevent sprinting the Moonball from one side of the board to the other, especially with haste. Seeing how haste is worded, it is possible to move twice with haste (the token says move or gain a second action as opposed to just gain an action which could be used to move). I don't know how broken that is.--changed the wording to allow 3-4 players--added XP for a model that scores on an other player's goal.--added rules to use medal tokens to outline a player's goal on the board.--reduced ninja count to 6 to keep the field from fur balling as much.--reduced goal size to make it easier to defend now that the ball is more mobile.

I have only tried this with shrine teams and so far its been interesting.

I'm interested in seeing where this goes. I like your commitment to this idea. I will be checking in on this from time to time.

Haste as it is currently worded is really hard to work with. My intention is that a model can use its normal movement and whatever movement buffs they have to move the Moonball. However I want to prevent a model from doing a double move with the Moonball using Haste. I limited it to movement before using an action, but this doesn't cover the Haste usage. Is there a clean way of doing this with specifically invoking Haste? This would be easier if Haste granted an extra action (as a model can still double sprint).

Haste as it is currently worded is really hard to work with. My intention is that a model can use its normal movement and whatever movement buffs they have to move the Moonball. However I want to prevent a model from doing a double move with the Moonball using Haste. I limited it to movement before using an action, but this doesn't cover the Haste usage. Is there a clean way of doing this with specifically invoking Haste? This would be easier if Haste granted an extra action (as a model can still double sprint).

You could word it to say "the ball can be moved during only one of the ninjas movements in an activation" This would slightly change things, in that they could regular move to the ball and use an action to run with it (and possibly have a sprint keyword bonus on that). but it would limit double haste movement at the same time.

The idea is that a model can pick up the ball at any point during the first move a model makes. But the ball has to be returned to the board before that model makes another move or an action. I wanted to limit the movement to one move per activation because the distance between the center and the goal is so short.

It may want to say something along the lines of "at any point during their first move this ninja moves adjacent to the ball" or something like that then. I can see how what you wrote could be interpreted the way you want it, but it's not super clear.

Version 3! Fight!-Moonball is immune to all abilities other then attacks and it is immune to ranged attacks. //No more OP Kitsune Mudoushi-The words are re-worded

Played this a couple times with Icha vs Kitsune; It is starting to feel solid. The ball moves freely around the board which prevents furballing. Given how close the ball is to being scored each turn (5+mv + 3spaces from attack) it's almost always a tough decision to attack the ball or attack another model.

I think this is ready for other people to try out. I would really appreciate feedback on the clarity of the rules, XP scored per match, match length, and gameplay.

-The moonball can move up to five spaces when an air result is chosen in combat against it.-The goals were squashed a little.

These changes were made to encourage teams to spread out a bit more and to make passing the ball to unactivated models more viable. The game also scores more frequently, the games I played were in the range of 4-6 total points between both sides.

Version three played like that and I was finding that my friends were frustrated by that. Also since the game continues and ball teleports to the center after a goal, a greater score throughput makes spreading out much more viable then swarming the ball.

I played this a few more times over the past couple weeks and the rules have stayed the same. My most recent match Ika v Ijin scored extremely low (1 - 0 ). The final round devolved into a diffuse brawl over the entire field as it became clear that neither team was going to score after the first few activations that round. Between the copious amounts of trash talking and combat that were present all match, I feel this is a fairly functional football variant.